Reflections on Applications of “Consent” & its Implications for Authoritarianism

If the principle of consent is not just reserved for sex, then in how many different contexts can it apply? In the August TAAAP Pride Chat, some of the participants questioned why “consent” is typically discussed around only sex (or, if taken any further, only physical touch), arguing that it should be applied to other forms of intimacy, as well — and that got me to thinking: if we’re going to ride this train, let’s take it even farther than that.

[Crossposted to Pillowfort. Preview image credit to Damian Gadal, CC BY 2.0]

Right doesn’t equal sexy.

There’s already a lot of debate around the ethics of engaging with (and, specifically, enjoying) unethical pieces of media (…however that might be defined). This isn’t about that so much.

This post is about the opposite.

Content Notes: sexuality and porn talk (non-explicit); morality & pleasure talk, including possible scrupulosity triggers.

Belated Christmas-rhetoric post: Keep [?] in Christmas

Hm, okay. Here’s a thought I’ve been having. Even though it’s January now, a lot of people still have Christmas decorations up, right, and the other day while driving through an unfamiliar part of town I passed a church(?) with a big ol’ “Keep Christ in Christmas” banner, and that reminded me of my whole… perspective, on… that.

Feelings Dogma

I don’t know if I’ve said it here before but I’m saying it now: I don’t adhere to or support any guideline for How You Should Live Life that’s based on feeling the correct feelings, whether that means feeling others’ feelings (“empathy” as a prerequisite for correct morality); disallowing yourself unhappiness (“staying positive” as a virtue); or pushing discomfort, risk, and unease as self-justifying mandates (in praise for “vulnerability” and “getting out of your comfort zone”).  Dogmas of feelings have always been useless at best for me, outright detrimental more often than not, and I don’t want any part in them.

healthy is relative

[cw: health talk, food talk, diet talk, weight-adjacent talk]

People keep using “healthy” to mean “something you (general you) should do,” and so I feel compelled to keep talking about this.

“Healthiness” isn’t some kind of inherent trait, some innate Platonic value, embedded in a thing and applicable to all.  And what I mean by that is, it’s frequently possible that what may be healthy for some may not be healthy for others, and what may not be healthy for some may yet be healthy for others.

Here’s an explanation of what I mean.

the bedroom is a social construct

I saw something again — not linking on purpose because of context — mentioning, secondhand, a claim paraphrased as “if your kink bleeds into your everyday life outside of the bedroom, it’s bad for you.”

And like the responder I found, I take issue with that entire premise.

As far as I can tell, it’s basically a slight rewording of the common kink apologetics catchphrase — that XYZ earn their acceptability by being “only in the bedroom,” i.e. sure XYZ could be a bad thing, but not if it happens “only in the bedroom,”  …which is a line of argument that has multiple, multiple problems, some of them more significant than others.  They’re all so interrelated, though, I don’t know where to start.

So I’ll start here: Why does the locale of “the bedroom” grant some kind of moral/harm-metric exemption status?  As best I can figure, it’s because “in the bedroom” (aka “during sex”) refers to some of the most private moments of the most private room of a private dwelling — supposedly far removed from the “public sphere” and “everyday life.”  And therefore, it doesn’t affect anyone.  And therefore, it doesn’t affect you.

What?

Judgment Sets

Here’s another one of those things, besides the word “violence,” that gets confusing in ethical delineations of harm — assigning evaluation criteria based on who an act “involves.”

“The sub is the one who’s really in control”

[cw: kink talk, D/s talk, consent talk, rape mention, food mention]

I’ve heard this line multiple times now, so it’s getting its own post here for the next time it comes up again.

…but how can you tell

re: this post, this advice on mental illness, self-harm, and masochism

Seriously.  How can you tell though?

Violation as a Form of Humor

A post about sarcasm, play-acting, and consent.

Let me illustrate what the title is describing, first.